Why do finals have to absolutely kill you? I BOMBED my programming final. Absotively, posilutely bombed. Q_Q

I swear, I’ve studied my ass off and I still bombed it. 90 questions right out of 165. I think that with this next round of textbook sales I’m going to burn a little money and get a bunch of used programming books so maybe I can figure out where I went wrong.

At any rate, that isn’t the reason for my rant. (While it’s a perfectly good reason, it’s not the reason aside from contributing to my already crabby mood.) Yes, it’s another “I want feedback, damnit” emo rant.

To begin, the standard install of eFiction is actually pretty good. It’s a nice, versitile content management script meant to run a writing site with minimal effort. We wanted things that weren’t included, so we’ve heavily modified it. (Why do I think of the Millennium Falcon when I write that?)

Between us, we’ve added a crapload of functions that weren’t already present. Some you can see, some are internal and invisible. We are constantly mucking around in the code trying to improve the site. After all these months, I’m still trying to get the trophy case going, though I have it half installed now.

We made it after FF.net started being such a pain in the ass about adult fics and when we realized that only shitty stories got any attention. Using the crap we went through with the fan fiction section of The Ronin Dungeon as a guide, we created rules to help us get stories that we’d like to read. We’re trying to appeal to the authors who have become disenchanted by the amount of crap out there or alienated by the larger sites.

While I’m not happy about the bulk of Insert Yous and CYOAs, I do have to admit that allowing them has finally put us on the map. They’re the latest group of disenchanted authors and thus, they’re making up the bulk of the new signups. We were too new when FF.net banned adult stories, so we missed out on them. We get about 5000 to 6000 visitors a month, up from only about 1000 not too long ago. We’re getting daily submissions and actually have a fair amount of authors who we’ve decided to trust and validate.

Yeah — even with our rules, we’re still getting a fair amount of crap. Stories with problems are still sneaking in; mainly because we don’t always have time to go through them with a fine-toothed comb. We figure that with our rules, the bad stuff or the ones that are being held for ransom won’t get the attention they would on FF.net and MM.org and the author will eventually abandon our site.

What irratates me is the fact we’re getting 99% of our feedback off from obscure, little LiveJournal communities and message boards. They’re not to our “face,” not put into an e-mail, but posted to places that I have to hunt down to find. The first few were okay, but — geez! I’m not seriously upset, but after fighting through finals I’m feeling a little jaded.

I realize that a part of this is just a sign that we’re on the radar now. I also realize that it’s a rant and people have a right to vent whenever they need. I usually ignore it.

It just has been irritating me when we don’t get feedback when we ask for it (e.g. the story type feature), but then here’s this LJ post complaining that we have too many Insert You’s in the Kingdom Hearts category. (And then going into a rant about how they won’t post their stories here because of that.) -_-;; Sal and I purposely put that in to help people find what they wanted, but apparently they want to be able to exclude stories so they don’t have to “wade through those fics.” We only have about 800 stories total; compared to The Pit that’s not much to wade through.

So… I put in a exclusion sort; it’s not that difficult. It’s a minor change to the MySQL query, just a single keyword added to the right SQL statement within the sort function/module. It’s the difference between “AND $storytype” and “AND NOT $storytype”.

Responses? Just five. *sigh* No one has noticed the trophy case is almost done or the changes to the search function. And now we have to write the newsletter, which seems like a lost cause until I checked and noticed we have 200 subscribers.

Again, I’m mainly crabby thanks to finals. But I am tired of trying to guess what’s needed/wanted.